By Karl Eisenhower
washingtonpost.com Staff Writer
Thursday, September 14, 2006; 4:47 PM

In 1989, at the impressionable age of 23, I relocated from my home in Northern Virginia to Austin, Texas, to work for a political consultant. My primary assignment was researching the candidates who were running against Ann Richards in the 1990 Texas gubernatorial race.

Everything you have heard about her charm and wit are true. She and I shared a mutual friend, so when I first arrived in Austin I had the basis for introducing myself. After I greeted her, she beamed brightly and said, "Aren't you glad to be sprung from Washington?"

"Well, no," I answered, "Washington is my home."

"That doesn't matter. Waco is my home, and I'm definitely glad to be sprung from there," she replied.

I was the campaign's designated "opposition researcher." As the primary election neared and the campaign began to focus on accusations and counter-accusations, my knowledge of the opponents' vulnerabilities was needed. So, despite my youth, I was repeatedly summoned into the campaign's strategy meetings.

Richards's most formidable opponent was the state's sitting attorney general, Jim Mattox. Mattox had a reputation of fighting dirty to win elections, and his campaign slogan was "Texas Tough." He saw himself as a populist, but the state's press and political class considered him a bully at best and a crook at worst.

As Richards, then the state's treasurer, began to pull ahead in the polls, the Mattox campaign made an effort to paint the opposing candidate as dirtier than their own. The charge they settled on was drug abuse.

Richards was a recovering alcoholic who palled around with bon vivants like Willie Nelson, so when the Mattox campaign floated rumors that Richards had been a drug abuser, the charges had the air of plausibility. Mattox framed it as a law and order issue: Texas voters had a right to know whether or not the chief magistrate was a law breaker.

Richards refused to answer the question. This rankled the (primarily male and culturally conservative) hired help in the campaign. The lesson they had learned from Douglas Ginsburg's failed supreme court nomination in 1987 was that it was safest to confess misdeeds before others proved them true.

The press largely agreed with this view, and they hounded Richards relentlessly with infinite variations of the same question.

The candidate's (primarily female and culturally liberal) old friends circled wagons. No one would care what Richards had done in the past, they argued. Mostly, they were trying to prevent her from being humiliated in public.

Within the campaign's conference rooms, a war raged over how to respond to the charges. The dispute focused on the question, "Should she confess?" -- even though none of the people arguing about it knew for sure whether or not there was anything to confess.

Richards remained aloof, as if she didn't care that her silence could cost her the election. She felt that confessing the details of one's addiction would convey to young addicts that even if they did reform, they would always be hounded by past misdeeds. To her this seemed a matter of principle that was more important than being elected to high office.

"By continuing to raise these questions," she said when asked about the charges in a debate, "I think we are sending a very sad message to a lot of people who think that if they seek treatment they will forever bear the stigma of their addiction."

But just as importantly, Richards understood that Americans believe in redemption. She shared with most Americans a belief in the possibility for self-transformation. Richards knew that most Americans believe in God, and they believe that He is not only willing, but eager to forgive. Consequently, if God will give us a second chance, we should be willing to grant a second chance to each other.

Ann Richards never publicly answered the questions about drug abuse. She had confidence that it wouldn't be important to most voters. This was a confidence that few in the press or her campaign staff shared, but in the end she was right.

Richards won a runoff primary against Mattox by almost 160,000 votes and won the general election that fall. She was an effective and popular governor who would have won reelection four years later if the Republican tide of 1994 and Texans' resentment over perceived mistreatment of former president George H.W. Bush had not been so strong.

The American ethos of forgiveness helps explain Marion Barry's longevity in D.C. politics and Bill Clinton's ability to rebound from his impeachment. Still, some Americans find it puzzling that the "bad boys" of American politics can sin again and again and seemingly get away with it.

But I don't question it any more. As I get older and look back on my own errors, I'm glad to live in a country that grants second chances. And I'm glad people like Ann Richards, who bring wisdom gleaned from making mistakes and rebounding from them, are willing to risk their reputations to serve the public.

Rest in peace, Gov. Richards.